Читать книгу She’s Not There - Tamsin Grey - Страница 18

Miss Swann had already started the Year 4 register. She looked up over her reading glasses. ‘Emmy, Jonah, you made it! Awesome!’ She was smiling, and the classroom smelt of her rosewater.

As he slid into his seat, Harold grinned at him with his loony grin. ‘Yo, fam,’ he whispered. They fist-bumped, and then Jonah looked back at Miss Swann. She was wearing a stripy summer dress with shoulder straps, and when she leant forward you could see her strangely long thin bosoms hanging down. Not bosoms. That’s what Lucy called them, but no one else did. Most people said ‘boobs’, but it didn’t feel right, calling Miss Swann’s that. Maybe ‘mammary glands’. Her long, thin mammary glands. Lucy would think that was funny. He smiled, picturing her laughing. Hers were nicer: fat and round, with puffy brown nipples.

In Assembly they rehearsed ‘Star Man’, which they’d be singing at the end of the Talent Show on Thursday evening. After the singing Mr Mann did certificates, and Jonah got one for his Broken House project, which he’d been working on all term as part of the Local History theme. All the Local History projects were on display in the hall, and at the end of Assembly Jonah hung back to gaze up at his.

The house next door to us was built in 1862, by a rich Timber Merchent called Mr Samuels. It was a detatched Villa, in a Full-blooded Gothic Style, enlivened by vigorus Foliated Carvings.

He’d copied that last bit out from the London Survey website. He and Lucy had crept into the house to take the photos, showing the ruin it was now. One of the photos was amazing, looking up from the inside of the house, through the broken roof, to the sky. He imagined showing the certificate to Lucy when he got home from school, and telling her he would share it with her, because of the brilliant photo she’d taken – and Lucy sticking the certificate on the fridge.

‘OK, Jonah, that’s enough drooling over your own genius!’ Mr Mann’s hand came down onto his back, and propelled him out into the sunshine.

The playground was a swirl of children, flying about and screeching. The clouds had all gone, leaving a mysterious blue emptiness. All the colours are there, he remembered. It’s just that blue light waves are shorter and smaller, so they scatter more when they hit the molecules. The endlessness of the emptiness made his stomach drop, as if he was falling. Then he saw Harold, over by the fence, looking through into the Infants’ playground.

‘Is your mum better?’ asked Harold as Jonah drew up beside him.

‘Yes.’ In the Infants, Raff and Tameron and their three chorus girls were rehearsing the Camber Sands rap for the Talent Show.

‘Can I come to tea, then?’

‘Maybe.’ Jonah remembered the first time Harold had come to tea, when they were in Reception. Harold hadn’t been himself, to begin with. He hadn’t wanted to play anything, or eat or drink anything, but had just stood with his hands in his pockets, mute. Jonah had been at his wits’ end, but then Lucy had asked Harold what his favourite animal was. ‘A peregrine falcon.’ He’d whispered it so quietly they had only just heard.

‘A peregrine falcon!’ Lucy had gasped. ‘How fast can it fly?’

‘Two hundred and forty-two miles per hour,’ Harold had told her. ‘Which is the same as three hundred and eighty-nine kilometres.’ After tea, on the way back to his flat, Harold had held Lucy’s hand all the way.

‘Your brother’s a boss dancer.’

Jonah leaned his forehead against the wire fence and watched. A crowd had gathered around Raff and Tameron and were joining in at the chorus. ‘Ooh, Smelly Shelly! Uh, Smelly Shelly!’

‘Who is Smelly Shelly anyway?’ asked Harold.

‘It’s a shell. They found it on the beach, when they went on the school trip.’

‘A shell!’

‘Yep.’

‘Did they make up all those words themselves? I bet your mum helped them.’

‘A bit.’ Her face came into his head, and he wondered if she was back in the house yet. ‘Saviour helped more. He thought of lots of the rhymes.’

‘Emerald’s dad?’

‘Yep.’ Jonah leaned more heavily onto the fence, feeling the wire digging into his forehead.

‘I think they’ll win. Do you?’

‘I dunno.’ Jonah pictured Raff’s face, glowing with triumph; Lucy’s face, in the audience, crying probably. Crying and clapping. He smiled.

‘Why are you smiling? Do you want them to win?’

Jonah slid his eyes towards Harold, who was inspecting him, his eyes tiny because of his thick glasses, his cheek resting on the wire. ‘Is there even going to be a winner?’ he asked. ‘I thought it was more – just a show.’

‘Well, if there is a winner, it should be them.’ Harold looked back at Raff, who had started breakdancing. He shook his head. ‘You might be Gifted and Talented, fam, but your brother’s boss at everything. He’ll win all the Sports Day races.’

Jonah shrugged. He rocked back onto his feet, and felt the grooves the wire had left with his fingertips. ‘You know the universe?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think it really goes on forever?’

Harold shook his head. ‘No, there’s other universes. Millions of them.’

‘And then what?’

‘I dunno. Can I come round to tea tomorrow?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘If your mum’s better, why can’t I?’

‘I’ll ask, OK.’